Before Trevor Noah took over as host of The Daily Show, he indicated that Fox News would not be the target of his perpetual outrage in the same way it had been for Jon Stewart. But the conservative news network’s on-air talent did something so egregious this week that he could not help but call them out.
Following President Obama’s address on his executive action to combat gun violence, numerous Fox commentators called into question the veracity of his tears when he brought up the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School that left 20 first-graders and six adults dead.
“See that thing you're feeling right now? That pain in your chest, that comes from watching someone weep on national television, because he knows that society can do better than to file the shooting of children under ‘shit happens.’ That feeling is how you know that you are human,” Noah said after playing the clip of Obama openly crying on national television. “No matter how opposed to Obama’s policies some people may be or how cynical their politics, they have to at least acknowledge and respect the raw authenticity of that emotion. Or so you would think.”
From there, viewers saw Fox pundits like Andrea Tantaros and others asking why Obama didn’t show the same type of emotion after the Paris terrorist attacks and even suggesting that his tears were fake.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Noah asked in disbelief. “Shedding tears when you think of murdered children is not really believable? You know what, there is something here that’s not really believable: the fact that the rest of us have to share the title of human being with you.”
It was a level of sincere outrage that Noah had not yet displayed during his few months behind The Daily Show desk, and the fact that it was directed at Fox News made it all the more meaningful for regular viewers of the program.
Noah’s words also put him in unlikely agreement with Donald Trump, who told Fox & Friends Wednesday morning that he “actually” thinks Obama’s tears were “sincere,” adding, “I’ll probably go down about five points in the polls by saying that.”